


it came upon a midnight clear

by TolkienGirl



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 'the world in solemn stillness lay (to hear the angels sing)', Christmas, F/M, Gen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Religion, Steve in the past, a companion piece to my other midnight mass fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28334913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: It was 1954. Next year would be ten since Steve went into the ice. Fifty-seven till he came out.Thirty until—
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	it came upon a midnight clear

The recessional had ended, but the one cassocked altar boy returned to the sanctuary to snuff the candles. There was incense hanging in the air with the wick-smoke; the shadows were softened by its sweet haze, and only the sharp clean scent of the fir-boughs in the statuary alcoves cut through its richness.

Steve rose, and genuflected. His left knee creaked. He wondered absently if it would develop arthritis, or if the body of a super-soldier would grow old very neatly, and without any particular ailment.

They sometimes attended the Anglican service, for Peggy, but on Christmas Steve yearned for Midnight Mass.

“ _Et lux perpetua luceat eis…requiescant in pace…_ ”

Steve half-turned, and said to the top of Peggy’s wine-colored hat—she was still kneeling—“I’ll be back in a moment.”

She lifted her head. “Promise,” she said, half-smiling.

He nodded. It had been six years of bliss since resurrection, but he never knew what the future held—only a dozen different pasts.

Tonight he was thinking of hers. Maybe it was the tiny redhead slumbering in her mother’s arms, one chubby fist bunched in the fold of a shawl, that had reminded him.

Maybe it was just the persistence of memory.

Steve took the center aisle, treading scuffed parquet, and turned left at the altar rail. There were votives gathered beneath the Marian shrine; little brass cups brimming with yellow flame.

_…not all things to all people, all the time._

He reached for a lit taper.

He could have prayed in Latin if he wished. He recalled nearly all the words, now, having been reminded of them hundreds of times over.

But he was groping for Russian, what little he knew of missions long ago—or far ahead. Yes, it would have been right to pray for her in the native tongue she so rarely hinted at. It would have been just to give Natasha Romanoff back something she ought never to have hidden, or changed.

_The truth is a matter of circumstances; it’s not all things to all people, all the time. And neither am I._

_That’s a tough way to live._

_It’s a good way not to die, though._

It was 1954. Next year would be ten since Steve went into the ice. Fifty-seven till he came out.

Thirty until—

He remembered the first time he’d ever seen her, walking the deck of a ship that could fly. He remembered the last time he’d ever see her, smiling and promising.

The votive flickered to life. Steve said the prayer in English. It was strange to fit Natasha Romanoff and the mercy of God into the same sentence. But of course, his life—his series of lives—was strange.

The bells tolled one. An hour into Christmas day. He and Peggy would soon walk the streets side-by-side, laughing at the snowmen jumbled together on the abbreviated city lawns. They would have a leisurely dinner. They would reminisce.

It was what he wanted, what he would always want. Fate, after all, is nothing more than the things you choose—and so is time.

Natasha had understood that, even before she knew what time could do.

“Someone you lost, darling?” Peggy asked, coming up beside him and laying a gloved hand on his arm.

“Yes,” said Steve, quietly. “But she hasn’t been born yet.”


End file.
